Last week in Jakarta GBI co-sponsored and participated in the “Universal Service Fund Asia Leaders Forum,” a two-day workshop that brought together administrators of Universal Service Funds (USFs) throughout the Asia/Pacific and Middle East regions.  Attendees had the opportunity to interact with other USF administrators and learn about how other countries had found unique solutions to common problems.  The workshop consisted of presentations by advanced USF as well as panel discussions by USF administrators that were moderated by GBI’s USF expert, Mr. David Townsend. Great interest was sparked by Turkey’s presentation of the “Fatih” school computing program, as well as Malaysia’s “Wireless Village” project.  The CEO of Pakistan’s USF, Mr. Parvez Iftikhar, described his country’s policy of subsidizing service, rather that infrastructure, and detailed how he enforces this requirement through a unique scheme that employs government liens on infrastructure.  A number of countries expressed interest in trying to copy the model.

The workshop was officially opened by Indonesia’s Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs, H.E. Hatta Rajasa, who declared Indonesia to have a strong interest in the expansion of broadband access while committing his government to a target of 30% broadband penetration by 2014.  It closed with a discussion of the tools that countries needed to achieve such aggressive broadband penetration targets.  In the interim discussions ranged from how to create strategic and operational plans for USFs to the particular benefits of providing broadband access as opposed to other forms of communication.

In the end all participants left satisfied that they had contributed to a worthwhile discussion, and many left with ideas for how to improve broadband operations in their own country.  Mr. P. Choesin, of Indonesia’s Chamber of Commerce (KADIN) was so impressed with the conference that he suggested expanding it to include a worldwide audience and conducting it at a ministerial level.

The forum was the second in a worldwide series that is being sponsored by GBI in association with Intel Corporation.